Readon
by SnickieFics
Summary: After a new girl turns on the supercomputer, she and the other Lyoko warriors must now work to totally annihilate the reawoken XANA and restore a sense of normalcy to their lives. Will they succeed? And how will every screwball XANA throws at them affect them in their fight against him and in their formerly normal lives?
1. 1A Maiana

Late July 2007. It was a very eventful day, though it didn't start out like anything special; it was like any other Sunday-right-before-the-school-year-begins.

It had been over a year by now since six teenagers had left their old lives and begun living typical high-schooler lives. Four of these teenagers, two blond boys each on a laptop, a brunette boy, and a pink-haired girl, were sitting together at a table in the cafeteria. It was breakfast-time, and between glances at the laptop, the purple-blond would take sloppy bites of croissants dipped in chocolate and honey. Occasionally, he would steal one of the nerd-blond's croissants, taking advantage of his engrossment in whatever he was doing on his laptop. The pinkette occasionally looked over the nerd-blonde's shoulder to see what he was doing, but he turned so that she couldn't. Instead, she turned to the purple-blonde.

"Hey Odd, what are _you_ doing?" she said.

"I'm just surfin' the web, nothin' much," he replied as he stuffed another croissant in his mouth.

She looked at him, tilting her head slightly as she watched him with the croissant. "You know, Odd, it would be a lot easier if you actually took smaller bites and took the time to chew them."

He glared playfully at her, although he looked rather ridiculous due to the croissant still being stuffed in his cheeks like that of a chipmunk. He chewed for a minute, then swallowed enough to retort in a somewhat muffled voice, "You know what, Aelita? If you knew anything about _good_ croissants, you'll know that you've gotta be FAST to get any, and as many as will satisfy a superstar appetite like mine. Slow pokes—" he reached over and stole another one of the Jeremie's croissants, "—like Jeremie here, on the other hand."

"Go ahead, Odd. You can have them." Without looking up from his laptop, Jeremie pushed his plate towards Odd with one hand.

"Thanks, Jeremie!" beamed Odd, as he this time took Aelita's advice and took a smaller bite of one end of Jeremie's croissant. He tapped some more on his keyboard and then shut the laptop, put it away in his bookbag (purple, of course), and leaned back in his chair. "I'm not sure whether I prefer that kind of surfing the web to the kind we used to do on the Skid. I loved shooting down all of XANA's fishy monsters there."

The brunette with the military-style jacket piped in for the first time, "We've had enough close calls and bad times with XANA there that I think I prefer the way you were doing just now. What are you doing anyway, Jeremie? Surely not just idly surfing the web like Odd was."

Jeremie tapped something out on his keyboard, and then shut the laptop on his lap. "Just putting a few finishing touches on the summer assignment."

"Is that the only thing you've been working on this summer?" Ulrich asked.

"Of course not, Ulrich," said Jeremie. "In fact, I've a little something I want to show you guys later on, after we get our schedules and see Yumi."

Odd and Ulrich looked at Aelita, who shrugged. "I have no idea," she said. They stared at her a moment longer, then let it go as the principal and overweight gym teacher dismissed breakfast.

The heroes picked up their trays and cleaned up their table before heading back to the dormitory building. Aelita and friends walked up the stairs inside, and she left them at their floor to continue up to the girls' floor, where her room was located.

To her surprise, however, when she arrived at her room, the door was already slightly ajar. _Strange_, she thought. _I'm sure I locked it this morning._

Slowly, curiously, Aelita pushed the door open to find another girl, who looked to be about sixteen, and a new set of dorm furniture (bed, desk, wardrobe) had been moved in. The girl was unpacking a bright red suitcase on the new bed, her back turned to Aelita, and the pink-haired girl could see a black clip pinning the girl's golden-brown hair to the back of her head, with the leftover hanging out divided into two thick strands that reached down to her shoulders.

She turned around as she heard Aelita shut the door.

The girl was tall, with tanned skin and dark brown eyes. She wore dark blue skinny jeans which showed off her figure quite nicely, a light grey tank top, and a short-sleeve dark purple cardigan, open halfway. Her jeans were held in place with a black belt. Her shoes were grey flats which at first glance looked a bit like Mary-Janes, and she wore no visible socks. Perhaps the most intriguing thing about her outfit was the blue-purple-and-black neckstrap, which Aelita had confused as a scarf initially. She was subtly pretty, and yet her current presence was matter-of-fact and maybe slightly tense. Aelita could tell she was nervous and surprised to see her, but she had wiped her face clean of it as soon as it was noticeable.

"Oh wow, pink hair," she said. Her voice was low, something between an alto and tenor range. "It figures that I get stuck with another weird roommate."

_Some first impression,_ Aelita thought. She already wasn't expecting to be having a new roommate, much less one who seemed quick to judge. Still, she had to try. "You haven't had good experiences with roommates in the past?"

"They've all either been total snobs or just plain cooky," she continued, twirling a finger around her ear in the crazy symbol.

"O-oh..."

The girl went back to unpacking. "So...I'm Maiana, and you are...?"

"Aelita Stones."

"Pretty name," Maiana nodded.

"Thank you," said Aelita. A bit hesitantly she continued, "If non-annoyingness and pretty names are what you like, then I hope you find me to be a better roommate than all of your past roommates, and especially than Sissi."

"Who's Sissi?"

"Elisabeth Delmas. She's the principal's daughter, and she's the most selfish, stuck-up girl I've ever known."

"Given her name, I should have probably drawn that conclusion immediately. I guess it's a good thing that Mr. Delmas didn't room me with her."

By that point, Maiana had put everything away except for a cardboard box. She dug through the packing popcorn and lifted out a CPU and proceeded to set up a computer on the desk not already occupied by Aelita's computer. Aelita moved over to help her set it up, and before fifteen minutes had passed, it was up and running.

"Thanks..." said Maiana.

"No problem," said Aelita, sounding maybe a little annoyed, but Maiana didn't seem to notice.

"Is it time to go get schedules yet?" asked Maiana, looking at the clock on her cell phone.

"I think so," said Aelita, and the two girls left the dorms to go downstairs.

Upon reaching the administrative building, the pair was met by a crowd of kids, all trying to get their schedules. They had met up with Jeremie, Odd, and Ulrich on the way.

"Who's the girl, Aelita?" Odd had said.

"This is Maiana. Apparently Delmas decided I needed a dorm mate, and she's new here, so he roomed her with me," Aelita had replied.

"Hope she has some classes with us." Odd had given Maiana a wink, and she looked away towards the rest of the group.

Aelita had then introduced them, and Maiana had nodded to them respectively, and from there they had all proceeded to make their way to the administration building, where they were now, fighting the crowd of kids to see what was going on.

"Calm down, kids. Let's get into three lines by last name. A's through G's, over at this table on my right. H's through R's to the table just behind me, and S's through Z's at the table to my left!" An overweight gym teacher, the beloved Jim Morales, bellowed out orders with his megaphone as he pointed students to their respective tables. Maiana, Aelita, and Ulrich got in line behind some fifth grader who was looking up and gushing at the red-headed Milly Solovieff just in front of him. Ulrich and Aelita discussed their summer vacations and Maiana just remained silent as they moved closer and closer to the table. Finally, the fifth grader moved away, and Maiana was at the front of the line.

"Your name, please?" The woman sitting at the desk was a blonde-haired lady who looked to be in her forties, with laugh lines and glasses. A name tag on her chest identified her as Nicole Weber. A stack of papers and a stamp stood in front of her.

"Maiana Schaeffer, foreign exchange student."

"Good to see you here. Your test results were phenomenal, and I feel you'll be somewhat pleased with your schedule," said the woman.

"I certainly hope so," Maiana replied with somewhat of a smile.

Aelita stopped talking as Maiana received her papers from the receptionist and moved away, standing awkwardly to one side, as if waiting for Aelita.

"Aelita Stones."

Aelita and then Ulrich both received their papers from the receptionist, and then the three moved away to where several other kids, including Jeremie and Odd, were standing and comparing schedules. As it seemed, Jeremie, Aelita, Ulrich, and Odd all had most of their classes together, save for some electives including art. The other two, a Japanese girl and another guy with blue-black hair, also had most of their classes together. Maiana quietly tried to stay out of their conversations, though she did listen in.

"Hey Miranda!" Odd's voice rung out over the rest of them, catching Maiana's attention, and she looked up from her paper. "What's on your schedule?"

_That's a good question,_ she thought. _What_ is _on my schedule?_ Perusing it, she saw a list of classes and times. On A Days, P.E., Language Arts 11, History, lunch, Spanish, and then music performance. On B Days, P.E., a free period, Literature, lunch, Biology, and musical theory.

"It's Maiana. You know, like My-yah-nah." She corrected him first, and then handed it over to Odd, who perused it intently.

"Cool! We have Language Arts, lunch, Spanish, and music together!" he said, handing the schedule back. "But it looks like you might have a lot of classes with Yumi and William too." He indicated the Asian girl and the other black-haired boy, who lifted their heads respectively at the sounds of their names.

"Hey, Yumi. What classes do you have?" Ulrich asked.

"Oh, nothing particularly interesting. I've got gym, trigonometry, history, lunch, Spanish, and study hall, and then more gym, Languages, Literature, lunch, biology, and world culture."

"Hey, I've got world cultures too!" said Ulrich. "We actually have a class together this year!"

"Doesn't sound too dissimilar from my schedule," Maiana commented.

"Well then we'll be seeing a lot of each other, won't we," Yumi replied. "I'm Yumi, by the way."

"Maiana. Nice to meet you."

"See you around," she replied with a smile.

The group turned away, chattering happily, and walked off to who-knows-where, leaving Maiana standing where she was. She stared down at her schedule again, and then walked off in a different direction, towards the gates of the school. She had some free time, and she didn't feel like being in the dorms anyway, so why not do a little exploring?

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

After wandering through the streets on her own for a short while, she came upon a river, with a bridge leading to what looked like an abandoned factory building. It was open, and despite every screaming voice in her head telling her not to go in there, curiosity whispered in her ear, and she listened to it.

The inside of the building was several stories tall, the entrance she had just come through on the second story. The floor on this story went along just that wall before dropping off in front of her. Immediately in front of the entrance was something which looked like it used to be a staircase but had long since been broken away. It looked as if somebody had installed four ropes in the ceiling to compensate for that. Maiana reached out and grabbed one and swung down to the main floor.

"Hello?" she called after landing. "Is anybody there?" The only sound that answered her was the running water in the river outside.

In front of her and slightly to her left, there was an old-looking freight elevator. It was open, and featured a small keypad and several large round buttons. She looked around quickly, and then stepped into the elevator. The first thing she did was make sure the ceiling hatch was operational, and then she took the elevator down one floor. Apparently the code to the keypad had been disabled, as the door opened at the next level without delay.

Behind the door was a room which was dimly lit. The walls were metal, with a small window near the top of the right wall, which was accessible by a ladder. Another hatch in the ground was also open, and from her angle she could see a ladder going down in there too. Additionally, there was a lab chair and an interface to a super high-tech looking computer. She approached the keyboard and tapped a few keys lightly; nothing showed up on the screen. _It must be turned off,_ speculated Maiana.

Looking around, she noticed a panel in the wall that looked slightly out of place from the other securely-fastened-and-straight panels. She approached it carefully and investigated, finding that it was, indeed, loose. Carefully moving it aside, she discovered a thick journal-like book. She took it out and began skimming through it, stopping to read the dog-eared pages and those which had notes sticking out of them. She stopped on one particular page and read for a few minutes, her eyes widening in interest.

"I've got to try this out for myself."

After replacing the book exactly where she found it, she wandered to the floor hatch and climbed down the ladder into the scanner room, and observed the three tall cylinders. They were dim and dark, and invitingly open. But it became clear very quickly to her that they were connected to the computer in the room above, and so she went back up into the lab and took the elevator down another level.

At this level was another room, much more brightly lit. As she entered, a cylindrical machine rose from the ground, its golden circuitry dim.

_Strange,_ she thought. _It's like it knows I'm here…_

She approached the machine, and stopped as she noticed a panel open and a lever stick out. She looked around to the left and then to the right for anybody who might be watching. She then tripped the lever, and the computer roared to life.

Hopeful, she took the elevator back up to the laboratory and woke up the supercomputer. A dark blue screen popped up as it connected, and suddenly a holograph map of an alternate world, with four spokes poking out of the center, appeared beside the supercomputer. She looked over at it and studied it, then back at the supercomputer. She stared for another moment before she realized she'd need the journal again. She got up, got it, and sat back down.

Looking down in the book, she found a program for some kind of vehicle, which she tried. A hollow green outline appeared on the screen, and then the window closed itself. Another window opened with a gridded map, and in the middle of it, a generic-looking dot.

_Oh, whoop-di-doo,_ she thought. _I can program dots._ She shook her head with disinterest and stood up to leave.

As she got up, however, she accidentally hit a few keys with her elbow. Turning around, she looked at the screen to see what her accidental keyings had done, and noticed a countdown timer and an empty slot-window next to each other on the screen. The timer was labeled, "Purple popsicle-head." _That's new. What's that supposed to mean?_

"I think I'll go explore those cylinders now," she thought aloud, and she took the elevator back down to the scanner room. They were all still invitingly open, but now, to confirm her hypothesis that they were connected to the supercomputer, they were brightly illuminated.

She took the invitation and stepped inside. But what she was not expecting was for it to close immediately around her, trapping her. She might have felt claustrophobic if the strong, powerful wind hadn't started to blow from somewhere below, and with the increasing sensation that the photons of light she was seeing were going through her physical being. The next thing she knew, one of the inner-rings of the scanner was glowing brightly, and she was floating and spinning through it. Finally, everything around her disappeared in a deafening roar and a blast of blinding light, and all sensations were lost.

It had all happened so quickly, though. One second she was being engulfed in light, and after the next blink, she was midair in what appeared to be the middle of Antarctica, minus penguins and fish. Two seconds later, she fell to the ground, landing ungracefully on her backside. "Ow," she muttered as she stood up, trying to rub the pain away. No, not pain—it was a strange numbness and tingling that was gone almost as soon as she had put a name to it.

She took a gander at her surroundings, with no visible light source. It was dark. Maiana would have guessed that it was night-time were it not for the fact that despite the darkness she could still see perfectly clearly. She spotted the vehicle she'd materialized, a floating purple hoverboard, decorated to look like some sort of cat.

Taking a breath, she discovered there was no bodily satisfaction in breathing, but no suffocating feeling without. For habit's sake, she decided to keep breathing normally. She took a step forward.

"Hello? Is anybody out there?" she called.

She stopped as soon as she noticed her feet: ice-blue skin-tight boots with a thin yet sturdy and flexible sole. From her feet, her gaze travelled upwards to her legs, which were covered in dark-grayish-navy-and-ice-blue-striped spandex leggings. Her entire body, save for her face and hands, in fact, was covered in this dark gray-blue skin-tight spandex material. Hanging from her hips was a mini-skirt of the same color, separated from her top by what appeared to be a thin ice-blue belt that came down to a point in the middle of her front, and draped over her shoulders was a pale ice-blue shawl. The edges of the shawl and skirt were cut in a way that they came to points in what looked like uniform, deep, upside-down waves. Her hands were pale gray, much paler than in the real world. They moved up to her face, and then to her hair, which she discovered had been pinned up, into something of a braided-crown. Three ice-blue lumps on her head went from her hairline to the braid-crown: one right on top and one on each side just above her ears.

Some sort of a witch or sorceress.

_Not just any witch,_ she mused. _I look like Jinx from the Teen Titans comics, minus her crazy hair. How did I get here again?_

She stepped forward again, and this time a noise not unlike a gunshot interrupted her. Her right shoulder stung, tingled and began to fill with a dull ache. She grabbed at it, and turned to find the source of the sound.

Two hideously ugly monsters that looked like a cross between deformed skulls and cockroaches had found her. They were kankrelats, but of course Maiana didn't know that. The small yet bulbous creatures were making for her with great speed. Sensing the danger of the situation, she turned and ran towards the hovering purple board. She was surprised at how easy it was to run in this virtual world; it seemed like it followed the same laws as Earth in physics, just with different numerical values, and it was almost liberating to be able to move this easily.

Unfortunately, she realized, the monsters also had this advantage. She reached the hoverboard, jumped on, and tried to fly away. She wobbled on it trying to keep balance, especially as each tiny wobble would send the board flying in a new angle or direction. But the cockroaches shot the purple board, which disappeared from under her feet. She fell, got up, and ran.

She found shelter in a large ice cave, but another sound sent shivers down her virtual spine. She turned around, and in came a jellyfish-like creature. Not knowing what it was there for, Maiana tried to run, but was foiled by the roaches and the jellyfish, which scooped her up, paralyzing her, and placed three tentacles to her head. They lit up, with translucent blobs of bright crimson moving away from her head. However, the jellyfish did not keep her long, and released her, causing her to fall to the ground, nearly unconscious.

She forced herself awake, holding her head, and as she tried to make for the entrance of the cave, she was blocked by the two kankrelats, and was quickly devirtualized. A tingling numbness spread from her feet to her body, and everything was engulfed in a bright light, her ears filled with a roaring sound again. It stopped soon, and she found herself in the scanner, barely able to keep her balance. The doors opened, and she used the sides to hold her balance while the world stopped spinning around her. Then, quickly, she stepped away from the scanner.

"This thing...," she mustered, "is incredible. I've _got_ to find more about it." She checked her phone. "But not now. Later, at a more decent hour." By decent, she meant a time when nobody would be looking for her.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

The whole Lyoko gang and Sissi were all sitting at a table in the cafeteria, eating spaghetti lunch, chatting idly.

"Hey, Aelita. Where's your new roommate, uhh, Mikayla?" inquired Odd.

"Yeah...I haven't seen her since we went and got our schedules," added Ulrich.

Aelita merely shrugged. "I don't know."

"What do you think of her?" asked Jeremie.

"I think she's a bit strange. The first thing she commented on was my pink hair. I bet she thinks I dyed it," Aelita replied.

"It's probably not like she comes across people with pink hair every day anyway. Does she think you dyed your eyebrows, too? How could she not tell it's natural?"

"Well like I said, I only _think_ that's what she thinks. I have no idea."

Yumi suddenly pointed. "Look, there she is." And sure enough, Maiana was entering the cafeteria, late, but not too late to get a little spaghetti, which she did. After obtaining a tray and a scoop of spaghetti, she stood there awkwardly, scanning tables. She started walking towards a mostly-empty table until Aelita waved, catching Maiana's attention. She went and joined them at the table, sitting down next to Aelita and across from Odd.

"Hi, Michelle!" Odd greeted, in a pleasant voice.

"Maiana," she corrected quietly. "Hello, Odd."

Sissi studied Maiana for a minute, and then turns away with a "Hmph!" Odd leaned across the table and whispered in Maiana's ear, "That's Sissi. Don't worry about her. I think she dislikes any girl who hangs around near Ulrich." Maiana nodded understandingly, and sat back, taking a bite of her spaghetti, effectively choking it down.

Aelita, meanwhile, brought a hand to her temple, suddenly leaning forward, her eyes closed. Jeremie noticed and was immediately at her side. "Something wrong, Aelita?"

Aelita retained her position, and then shook her head. "No, nothing at all. I'm fine. I just felt dizzy for a moment, that's all."

"Do you need to go to the infirmary?" Jeremie asked.

She shook her head again and looked at him, her voice still sounding a bit strained. "No, I'm okay."

Odd leaned across the table again. "So Marianne. Where'd you disappear to after we got our schedules?"

Maiana looked up at Odd from her half-eaten spaghetti, where the meatballs had been pushed to one side. "I decided to walk around town for awhile."

"Oh really? Where'd you go?" asked Odd.

"I don't really know. I got lost, but I used landmarks to find my way back."

"What kind of landmarks?"

"A bridge, some street signs and corner stores, a river. Nothing much."

Odd gave her a contemplative look. Maiana wondered briefly if she might have revealed too much about where she actually was. After all, how many rivers were there in Boulogne-Billancourt? She actually had no idea. He finally nodded and sat back, seeming to be able to tell that that was the most helpful information he was going to get from her. She breathed an internal sigh of relief.

After lunch, she disappeared again from right under the noses of the Lyoko group, and made her way back to the factory to search through files and programs in the supercomputer. One set of files caught her eye.

_"The Diary of Jeremie Belpois, Kadic Academy, eighth grade student, October ninth."_

"Interesting..." muttered Maiana. She set an alarm on her cell phone and then proceeded to continue watching the videos.

-xx-

_"Hi. Well, find anything?"_  
_"Yes. XANA."_  
_"XANA? What's that?"_  
_"A super dangerous program, like a virus, which can control electricity and activates towers on Lyoko to gain access to your world."_  
_"So, the red tower, the electricity monster, the weird symbol, the monsters on Lyoko? All that was XANA?"_  
_"Yes. Only Aelita can counter it by deactivating the tower that it uses for attacks in the real world."_  
_"That's great. And what about materializing Aelita?"_  
_"I could do it, but I need some time. It's dangerous. XANA can attack at any moment."_  
_"Be reasonable, Jeremie. We'd better just shut this thing down."_  
_"Listen. Now that we know how to neutralize XANA, we just have to get Aelita to the activated tower."_  
_"Mmhm."_  
_"We can find a way to counter the attacks while Einstein figures out how to bring Aelita to Earth, right?"_  
_"It's risky, but I think we should. After all, we're all Lyoko warriors, aren't we?"_  
_"Yeah!"_  
_"You really think you can do it?"_  
_"They don't call me Einstein for nothing. In a few weeks, I'll have it all figured out. Meanwhile, let's not forget about our pact, huh?"_  
_"Hey, relax. We all know how to keep a secret."_

_Oh my God_, thought Maiana. _What have I just woken up?_ She failed to recognize her roommate's voice in the recording, but she recognized the name.

_Aelita can't find out I was here. Ever._

She closed the video entry, and opened a program launch window, typing in a code for some other program, the notes open by her side.

_I've got to erase what I've done and eradicate this thing now._

On the screen, a green window opened with a hollow outline of Earth, and beneath it, a time. She entered the coordinates for that morning, and hit Enter to initiate the program. Five seconds later, a bright white light came from the holomap, and the world was lost in bright white light.

"Return to the past now!"


	2. 1B Maiana

"Well then we'll be seeing a lot of each other, won't we," Yumi said. "I'm Yumi, by the way."

"Maiana. Nice to meet you. "

"See you around," she replied with a smile.

The Lyoko warriors turned away, chattering happily, and walked off to who-knows-where, leaving Maiana standing where she was. She stared down at her schedule again, and blinked, bewildered. _Wasn't I just here?_ she thought. She stared after the retreating group. They certainly didn't look bothered. She turned around and wandered away, off to explore some other part of the town.

The whole Lyoko gang and Sissi were all sitting at a table in the cafeteria, eating spaghetti lunch, chatting idly.

"Hey, Aelita. Where's your new roommate, Maiana?" inquired Odd.

"Oh no..." gasped Aelita.

Jeremie was on the instant alert. "Something wrong, Aelita?"

Aelita took a quick look at Sissi to make sure she wasn't paying attention to something else, and then leaned in towards Jeremie's ear. "Don't you think it's strange that we're here, eating spaghetti lunch again?"

Jeremie's eyes widened, and he opened his mouth to say something, but was interrupted as Yumi suddenly pointed. "Look, there she is." And sure enough, Maiana was entering the cafeteria, late, but not too late to get a little spaghetti, which she did. After obtaining a tray and a scoop of spaghetti, she didn't stand there awkwardly as she did before, but immediately went to sit at the Lyoko group's table, saying nothing.

"Something's fishy," muttered Yumi. Jeremie nodded.

"Hey, Maiana!" Odd greeted pleasantly.

Maiana looked up at him. "You got my name right this time."

"Well, yeah. Did I get it wrong before?" he asked, appearing surprised, but Maiana noted a hint of falseness in his countenance.

"You called me Marianne last time."

This time Odd really did look genuinely surprised. "No I didn't," he replied, unconvincingly.

Sissi studied Maiana for a minute, and then turned away with a "Hmph!"

"Maiana," broached Aelita. "Can I talk to you for a few minutes? Outside the cafeteria?" Aelita cast a meaningful look towards Jeremie.

"Uhh, okay?" mustered Maiana. She took a quick bite of spaghetti, avoiding the meatball, and then pushed her tray over to Odd as she stood up and followed Aelita out.

Odd leaned across the table towards Jeremie, keeping his voice low so as not to attract the attention of Sissi, who was dreamily staring at Ulrich. "What's going on? Why are we back at lunch? And how does Maiana know I called her 'Marianne' last time we were here?"

"I don't know," Jeremie whispered back. "But I'm afraid at what this might mean."

"That the supercomputer's been restarted?"

"Or worse. That our old friend XANA's been reprogrammed and has returned to our world."

Odd gasped and leaned back.

Ulrich noticed Odd's strange gasp. "Something wrong?"

"Yeah..." managed Jeremie, his eyes wandering to Sissi and William, and then to Yumi's parents, who had just entered the cafeteria and were now approaching Yumi. They all appeared oblivious to Odd and Jeremie's private conversation. "I'll tell you about it later."

-xx-

"Maiana, I need to know exactly where you went after we got our schedules."

Maiana met Aelita's serious gaze with a guarded one. "Why does it matter to you? I went exploring, that's all."

"Where did you go?" Aelita's question emphasized each word as if it were an individual sentence. Perhaps she was trying to sound menacing, but...was that a trace of fear Maiana detected in Aelita's voice?

"I won't tell you until you answer my first question." Maiana crossed her arms stubbornly, and the two girls glared at each other. In fact, they were too busy glaring at each other to notice two adults, a man and a woman, walking past them into the cafeteria.

"Wherever you've been will determine my answer to your question, so it'd be best if you told me now."

A brief pause ensued, and then Maiana groaned. "Fine, I'll tell you. I went to—"

They were interrupted by a scream. "YUMI!"

Aelita immediately turned around, towards the door to the cafeteria. Yumi's parents were walking out with Yumi with some haste and urgency, and at first glance from a distance, looked completely normal, if seeing a 16-year-old holding hands with her parents could be considered normal. But after a closer look, Aelita and Maiana could see thin streams of purple electricity running down the exposed skin of Yumi's arms. William and Ulrich were chasing after them, followed by Sissi. Odd and Jeremie followed them out, but instead of following Yumi with her parents, they stopped in front of Aelita.

"Jeremie, what just happened?" asked Aelita.

"Jeremie and I were just talking, and then Yumi's parents came in and said they wanted to talk with Yumi, but when they grabbed her shoulders she went all unconscious, and they just started carrying her away," Odd explained in a rush.

"I want to go check out the factory. I'm afraid that somebody might have woken up you-know-who."

Aelita hesitated for a brief minute, and then nodded, and the three rushed off, leaving Maiana standing by herself.

"Well, I've already dragged myself into this mess, I might as well finish it and help clean it up." With that, Maiana set off after them.

"Maiana, what are you doing here?" huffed Aelita as she continued to run.

"You guys seem to know what's going on, so I suppose I should tell you guys where I rushed off to. The first time," Maiana huffed. "I went to a factory on a river."

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

"YUMI!"

Ulrich had only seen that Yumi was being led, almost dragged, away, unconscious and against her will. His only desire was to be with her, through whatever was ailing her. To be there for her, always and forever.

But he'd never admit it. Not that he'd admit that either.

William was the one who saw the truth behind her condition: the eyes of XANA that had replaced her parents' pupils.

"Ulrich!" He rushed forward and grabbed onto Ulrich, holding him back.

"Let go of me!" Ulrich shouted as Yumi's parents took her away. "I have to know what's wrong with Yumi!"

"I know what's wrong with Yumi!"

"You just want to-"

"YUMI!" Hiroki ran past them, chasing after Yumi. "Yumi's in trouble! Yumi's in trouble!"

"Sure looks like she's in trouble," said Johnny as he ran after Hiroki.

William ignored the kids. "Those people who took her just now. They had XANA in their eyes!"

Ulrich stopped, his eyes widening with bewilderment. "Are you sure?"

"I was possessed by the program for four months. I think I know what a possessed person looks like."

"Well, if you're right, it only means she's in more trouble than we thought, and she probably doesn't even know it," says Ulrich. "So, let's call it a truce for now." He held out his hand to William.

"For Yumi," said William as he shook Ulrich's hand. Then the two of them ran off toward where Yumi's parents had disappeared with the Japanese girl.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Yumi's parents, meanwhile, had made it out of the line of sight of team Lyoko and any other adults, and were now sending electrical charges down her arms. Several seconds later, Yumi's eyes opened, weary, and confused.

"Mom? Dad?"

Her parents glared at her, during which the Eye pulsated into plain sight. Yumi's eyes widened, but she had no chance to react as they sent more electrical shocks down her arms, now more painful and more targeted. She felt herself being forced to stand and walk with them.

"Yumi's in trouble! Yumi's in trouble!"

"Hiroki!" Yumi managed to hiss, but a shock of electricity silenced her quickly.

"Ah, there you are, Hiroki," said XANA-Mrs.-Ishiyama. "We're going home for the rest of the day." She held out her free hand for Hiroki to take.

"Can Johnny come too?" he asked.

"Of course," said XANA-Mr.-Ishiyama.

Hiroki took XANA-Mrs.-Ishiyama's hand, and in short, became XANA-Hiroki, who in turn made XANA-Johnny.

_Oh no, not my whole family!_ Yumi thought in horror.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

"So you're saying this XANA is an evil, self-aware computer program that you guys killed over a year ago, with the death of its creator who also happens to be Aelita's father—" she glanced briefly towards Aelita, whose tears were running down her face, "—as an unfortunate side effect, and with apparent success? And now it's somehow miraculously resurrected itself from the dead?" Maiana shook her head. "This story of yours is pure science fiction, and yet I know it's real."

"Yeah, we know you believe it," Aelita glared.

"That's exactly what Yumi said when Ulrich first told her about Lyoko and Aelita, while XANA was attacking us with a little electricity monster," said Jeremie.

"Monsters, yeah, uh-huh. Well, this isn't a discussion of how real XANA is and how this all appears to the average spectator," grumbled Maiana. "You're here to save your friend Yumi from her demon-AI-possessed parents by deactivating some switch or portal on Lyoko that controls their possession."

"How do you know all this?" asked Odd.

"I've read enough science fiction to imagine the possibilities. But, again, we're not here to discuss that."

"She's right, you know," Aelita spoke up, for the first time since she'd embraced the reality of the being that killed her father having somehow survived. "We can't dwell on the past right now. We've got to save Yumi, and the only way to do that is for me to deactivate the tower in time." She laid a hand on Jeremie's shoulder. "Jeremie, we have no choice. And don't forget that returning to the past won't bring anybody back to life, if the worst should happen."

Maiana shuddered at the grisly implications of Aelita's speech.

"Uh...okay, Aelita," Jeremie muttered resignedly. "The three of you, head for the scanners."

"You mean she's coming with us?" Odd pointed to Maiana. "She's never even been to Lyoko, though. And remember what happened to William?"

Jeremie nodded. "I remember what happened to William, but she seems to be smarter than that, and more cautious than he was. Even if she's not as powerful as he is, any edge she can give us against XANA will help. And knowing XANA, he'll have the tower well-protected."

"This is nuts," Odd murmured. "You're sure we can trust her?"

"Odd, we don't have a choice," Aelita argued softly. "She obviously remembers what happened before the Return was run earlier today, so she's probably already scanned herself. If she has, then XANA's only going to target her too, and she's going to have to find out anyway, and so there's no point in delaying it."

"Come on," said Maiana, her voice quiet. "Let's just go and get it over with."

Aelita nodded, and they both led a slightly peeved Odd to the elevator where they rode down to the scanner room.

Jeremie's voice rang out over the speakers. "I'm sending you to the mountain region, just south of the activated tower. Here we go." The three inhabitants stepped into the scanners, and the doors closed around them.

"Transfer: Aelita! Transfer: Odd! Transfer: Maiana! Scanner! ...Virtualization!"

And the world was engulfed in light and roaring. The next thing any of them knew, they were all suspended in mid-air, and a split second later, they landed on the ground, Odd and Aelita on their feet, Maiana on her backside again.

Standing up, she noted the subtle differences in her attire: her shawl and skirt were now purple, and her skin was a pale pinkish color, not unlike that of Aelita's. She turned to look at the other two, and had to restrain herself from rushing and running to Odd when she saw him, though a grin developed on her face. This did not go unnoticed.

"That's cute," she commented. "You're like a giant purple kitty."

"Yeah, big purple cat costume, I know," Odd said, sounding disgruntled yet grinning.

Jeremie's voice rang out from the sky. "Alright, get going. You guys have a tower to deactivate."

"Is that Jeremie?" Maiana asked.

"Yep, that's our good ol' Einstein," replied Odd.

Maiana glanced up at the sky. "Hey, Jeremie? Do you think you could save a copy of my virtual code into an arbitrary text file? I'd like to look at it later."

"Uh, sure, I can do that. In the meantime, watch your backs. You've got three bloks on your back."

"One for each of us. Cool!" Odd aimed his arm to fire, and Aelita hid behind him, forming an energy-shield to block the shots of the second blok. Maiana was left out in the open.

"Uh, Jeremie? I don't know how to fight here. I don't have any physical weapons," said Maiana.

Aelita threw an energy field at one of the bloks, landing perfectly on target and thus destroying it. "No energy fields or other forces either?"

Maiana dodged a laser and also hid behind Odd. "I don't know. If I do, I don't know how to summon them."

"Hold on, I'll scan through the code and try to find your combat powers, Maiana," said Jeremie. "In the meantime, hide! And try not to get devirtualized."

"Easy for you to say," mumbled Maiana. "They're not shooting fire rings at _you_."

"Watch out! XANA's sending more monsters!" Jeremie's shout rang out from the sky again. At the same time, a battery of new lasers began firing at the group: a tarantula had arrived. Maiana was hit once. Odd began firing at the tarantula while Aelita dealt with the two remaining bloks.

"Hide!" With some effort, Maiana managed to drag herself behind a rock, and curled up into the fetal position. She heard the explosions of the two bloks being destroyed. As Odd and Aelita focused their fire on tarantula, Maiana rocked back and forth, whimpering. "Don't hit me, don't hit me, don't hit me, don't hit me..." Somehow at that moment, she started to glow a purplish color, and then the tarantula, Aelita, and Odd also began to glow the same purplish color; white lines began to engrain themselves into the tarantula's arm cannons. It didn't take long for Aelita and Odd to notice the change.

"Jeremie, there's something really weird going on here right now with us and the tarantula," Odd said. Aelita stopped shooting energy fields to observe the tarantula, which kept firing at them as if nothing had happened. But try as it did, its lasers simply did not come close to hitting them.

"Maiana! What are you doing? You just lost fifty life points!" Jeremie, back in the lab, was flustered as a number on Maiana's card was reduced by fifty. Upon closer inspection, however, it was not her life points, which remained at eighty, but another number, which now read 450. "Wait...what's that? No, your life points are fine, Maiana, you've still got eighty of those, but... I don't get this! And what is this countdown?"

"The tarantula..." Aelita breathed, "...can't hit us anymore. Jeremie, I think Maiana did that."

Maiana slowly peeked around the rock she was hiding behind. "Jeremie? What's going on? What happened?"

"I-I'm not sure. I need more time to look at it. Hurry and get to the tower."

"Your hair's glowing, Maiana," said Aelita, pointing at her as laser beams fired past them.

"Do you think you did the glowing thingie, Maiana?" asked Odd.

Maiana shrugged in response.

"Enough chit-chat. Get Aelita to the tower!" yelled Jeremie.

The three of them made off for the tower. The tarantula stayed behind, not bothering to follow.

"Squadron approaching at three o'clock! Four hornets."

"Only four?" Odd asked.

Just as Jeremie warned and Odd spoke, in flew four hornets with a battery of lasers.

"You guys are losing life points too quickly! Odd: forty. Aelita: thirty. Maiana: ten."

As the tower came clearly into view, Odd looked at Maiana. "Do you think you could do that thing with the hornets like you did with the tarantula?"

"I don't know," she said. "I don't even know how I did it be—" The hornets dove again, focusing their efforts on Maiana, and she was devirtualized mid-sentence.

Odd and Aelita used their concentration to their advantage, thus taking out two of the four hornets as they retreated. The hornets dove again, aiming for Aelita, but Odd leaped in front of them, taking the impact of their lasers and thus being devirtualized. His sacrifice allowed Aelita to reach the tower untouched.

In the scanner room, two scanners hummed loudly, and then opened, emitting thick clouds of heated gas that quickly dissipated. Odd stepped out of one and looked in the other to find Maiana nearly unconscious in the floor of her scanner. He approached her and tried to prop her up to a sitting position. She responded weakly.

"Tower deactivated," Aelita's voice echoed.

"She's done it. Ready for a return trip to the past?" Jeremie asked over the speaker.

"You okay, Maiana?" Odd inquired softly.

"Yeah, I'll be okay," she murmured.

"Do it, Jeremie!" Odd shouted.

For the second time that day, white light enveloped the factory and the entire world as they knew it.

They found themselves in the cafeteria for the third time that day. Jeremie had timed it impeccably well; Maiana was already sitting in her chair. Sissi let out a 'hmph' and turned away. The rest of the table made idle chit-chat until lunch was over. The Lyoko warriors and Maiana piled into Jeremie's room, crowded around his computer.

The first thing that happened was a heated question from Yumi: "What's _she_ doing here?"

"Well, uh, she kind of helped out on Lyoko, and she's the one who restarted the supercomputer," Jeremie replied.

"You took her to Lyoko? After she restarted the supercomputer? She restarted XANA! Why should we trust her?"

"She and Odd helped me get to the tower," Aelita mentioned.

"She helped save your life," William pointed out.

"Your captors were doing a number on you, but you wouldn't remember because you were out cold for most of it," Ulrich added, nodding.

"And she'd already scanned herself when she discovered the computer for the first time," Jeremie added. "It was better for her to find out this way than to live life thinking she was a lunatic because she knew some things before they happened, or for her to go to the authorities because of us."

"Look, guys," Maiana interrupted. "I'm sorry I turned the supercomputer back on. I didn't know it housed a demonic artificial intelligence bent on conquering the entire world. I didn't know that running the return to the past would give it the energy spike it needed to reboot itself. I didn't know XANA was such a serious issue in your life. It's my fault, I accept the responsibility, and if you want to excommunicate me from your group, that's fine with me. Your secret will be safe with me. I've got nothing to gain from spilling the beans."

"It's up to you if you want to stay in the group or not, Maiana," Jeremie offered.

"I still don't trust her," Yumi grumbled.

"I agree with Yumi," William said.

"But didn't you just defend the girl...?" Odd asked.

"Nevermind," mumbled William.

"Look," said Maiana. "It's no problem for me to stay away from you guys if my presence causes so much ten—"

"You're staying in our group, Maiana, and that's final," declared Odd.

"I agree," said Jeremie. Aelita and Ulrich copied.

"What? You too, Ulrich?" Yumi gasped.

"She helped Aelita to save your life," Ulrich repeated. "Look, I'm not happy about it, but I think she'd make a good addition to the team."

The room was silent. Then Jeremie spoke, "Four to two. She stays if she wants to."

"Can we get back to whatever it was we were _going_ to talk about in here before my being _in_ got in the way?" Maiana asked.

There were some grumbles among the group, and then, one by one, they each nodded assent.

"So, even if Maiana was the one to restart the supercomputer and program the jump in time, I still don't understand how XANA could have come back," began Jeremie. "For that series of events to have fully reassembled XANA, XANA must have had to have been scattered in fragments in the supercomputer itself. Fragments which didn't get wiped out by my anti-XANA program. It was programmed very thoroughly."

"And don't forget my father. With him gone, there's probably no way we're going to be able to do it again anytime soon," Aelita added.

"We'll find a way, Aelita. We'll have to do something different and probably completely crazy, but we'll find a way," Jeremie reassured Aelita.

"Meanwhile, we'll have to keep him under control. If, as Jeremie says, XANA's back to his old self, then shutting down the supercomputer won't help anything; he probably still has the Keys to Lyoko," said Ulrich.

"So it's a combination your shortcomings and Maiana's actions caused by her lack of thought that have initiated the process that will turn our lives back into living hell, is that it?" snapped Yumi. Ulrich laid a hand on her shoulder, and she shook it off. "Well I don't want any part in it any more!"

"I've got an idea," Maiana offered. "Maybe we could keep the supercomputer off whenever Jeremie and Aelita aren't strictly working on programming in that category."

"That'd mean we'd have less time to do any programming whatsoever," Jeremie noted.

"And don't forget that XANA can still access the worldwide web even while it's shut down, which means he can do his dirty work abroad uninterrupted by us," Odd added.

"But it'd also mean that we could plan our programming time in the factory a lot more efficiently than when XANA just sporadically attacks us," said Aelita. "To be ready to respond at all times while the supercomputer is on, we could have a few of us at a time guarding Jeremie and ready to get me to whatever tower XANA decides to activate."

"That's true," commented William. "And it wouldn't even have to be all of us."

"So, by 'us', does that include Maiana?" asked Odd. At his question, everybody's eyes turned towards the brown-haired girl.

"I dragged you all back into this mess; I might as well help you fix it," she murmured.

"Thanks," Aelita whispered. "We'll get started on you and William's training tomorrow, after school."

"Thanks, Aelita," Maiana smiled humbly.


	3. 2 Fresh Meat

The original Lyoko gang minus Odd, who was ordering seconds, and Sissi were sitting at their normal table in the cafeteria. It was the beginning of lunchtime on the first school day of the year. There were three available seats left, and Sissi, who had dumped Herve and Nicolas long ago for the Lyoko group, had declared that Herve and Nicolas would not be sitting there. Jeremie was explaining a new math theorem they'd been learning in class to the table's inhabitants. Aelita was adding in examples, while the rest of the table paid close attention because, truth be told, most of them were horrible in math. Maiana was nowhere to be found.

The kids therefore didn't notice when one William Dunbar approached Odd as he was about to head to the table.

"Odd, do you have a moment?" William inquired.

"Uh, yeah. Sure, William." Odd looked a bit surprised, but just stood there and began to stuff spoonfuls of mashed potatoes in his mouth and listened.

"Good," said William firmly. "I know the supercomputer's been restarted."

"Yeah, 'at wa' 'ar' 'o figur ou'," said Odd through a mouthful of potatoes. He swallowed and continued. "We ran a return to the past after Yumi was attacked by her XANAfied parents. You were involved in the attack. Since your image is still in the supercomputer, you would've noticed it. Plus, you were in the meeting."

"That's not all it, though. I want to be a part of the group again.

"Obviously," said Odd between mouthfuls of gravy. "If XANA's managed to come back, you want to help fight him until he's gone forever. We understand that."

"No you don't, and that's not what I meant anyway," William growled. He took a deep breath and continued, this time less angrily. "Ever since you guys got me back from XANA, for the most part you've all treated me like... like I'm still XANA's slave. The whole school thinks I'm crazy because of that dimwitted clone you replaced me with. I've tried to make amends with everyone, but the only one really willing to listen is Aelita."

"I'm listening, aren't I?"

"Well, yeah. But you never listened when your friends were around."

"I tried." Odd lowered his head. "They didn't want to listen. But that doesn't make things right."

"I want us all to be friends again."

Odd nodded and swallowed another mouthful of potatoes. "Yeah, sure, whatever. But you gotta tell them that." He motioned toward the table.

"I want to tell them now, but not with Sissi there," William said. "Could you maybe lure away Sissi just long enough so I could talk to them?"

"I don't know. You'd have better luck keeping her away longer with Ulrich than me."

"Please, Odd. I don't want to postpone this at all."

"Hmm... I'll see what I can do." He then proceeded to eat a piece of some kind of green from his tray and waltz over to his table, sitting down across from Sissi.

"So Sissi!" said Odd casually. "I've been trying this new toothpaste out, it's supposed to make my smile all white and sparkly. How's it look to you?" He grinned toothily at her, and of course, there was a dark green leaf entangled in his front teeth.

"That is so gross, Odd!" she shouted, revolted. She picked up her tray and started to move to another table, but not without adding, "I bet you didn't even brush your teeth this morning."

"How did you know?" said Odd, milking it even more by stuffing another spoonful of mashed potatoes and gravy in his mouth.

Sissi hissed at him and walked away.

Ulrich leaned over towards Odd. "Thanks for getting rid of her. I was getting sick of her staring at me."

"No problem," Odd whispered back. "But you might not thank me for the next part."

Ulrich looked a bit surprised. "What do you mea—"

"Hi guys," said William, apparently trying to act casual. He took the seat across from Odd where Sissi had been sitting. "What's up?"

"Oh," said Ulrich.

William didn't miss it, and dropped the small talk. "You guys are still holding a grudge against me for what happened last year, aren't you?"

There was no response.

"Well, obviously I'm a part of the team."

"We know," said Yumi coldly.

"And I'd like to help out in more ways than just trying to save people on Earth."

"What if you get possessed again?" Ulrich blurted out.

"Don't you think that if XANA was going to do that that he would've attempted it in the last attack?" Aelita pointed out.

"That begs the question as to why he didn't. What is XANA waiting for?" mused Yumi.

"That's what we're taking advantage of. Build up his resistance to XANA while we still can," Jeremie interjected. "Let's just put that past behind us and focus on our current problem: XANA."

Just then the bell rang to end lunch. William and Jeremie threw their heads against the table.

"I'd rather focus on trying to survive double physics with Mrs. Hertz this very moment," Odd commented as he picked up his tray and stacked it on top of some others.

-xx-

Yumi and William walked together to Spanish class, only because they had to. The atmosphere between them seemed to glisten with tangible frost.

Maiana was there and had already taken her seat in the front right corner. William took the only open seat in the back, and since everyone else had already taken their seats, Yumi was forced to sit next to the American. It seemed the icicles weren't to melt anytime soon. Maybe Jeremie would choose to do their training session in the desert today, mused Maiana.

"¡Buenas tardes, chicos y chicas!" A high-pitched female voice came from the hallway. Its owner, a short, pale-skinned, black-haired woman, came through the door half a second later. She continued to talk as she walked briskly to her desk.

"Yo soy la Señora Vega, y soy vuestra profesora de español."

"Hola, Señora," repeated Maiana. Sra. Vega smiled, and proceeded to talk about the lesson plan for the semester and to hand out worksheets for the day.

"Hey, why weren't you at lunch today?" Yumi whispered when the teacher was in another part of the classroom.

"I was talking to Mrs. Meyer," Maiana replied.

Ew, math. The thought went through Yumi's mind before she could stop it. She had to admit that even while it wasn't her favorite subject (and that she was only mediocre at it) it had saved her life in the past. Or, rather, Jeremie's ability to use it quickly and efficiently had saved her life. Rather than discuss such a tedious subject, however, Yumi took a different direction.

"Did you eat anything?"

Maiana shrugged. "I ate an apple and some stale plantain chips. What's with the small talk?"

Yumi, slightly taken aback at how strangely natural the sentence had sounded, grimaced and turned back to her worksheet. "Just wondered."

A Chinese girl sitting behind the pair turned her head toward the blonde girl next to her while keeping her eye on Yumi and Maiana, and murmured, just loud enough for them to hear, "Awkwaaaaard."

Yumi glared. Maiana ignored them both.

-xx-

The end of the school day finally came, and the Lyoko gang said their goodbyes to Sissi before heading to the factory. Since XANA wasn't attacking, and Maiana and William didn't have any transportation yet, they walked through the sewers.

Once at the lab, Jeremie began what would have become a huge questionnaire had Odd not interrupted. Maiana, William, and Aelita stepped into the scanners, and Jeremie began the virtualization process.

Three hollow blue outlines appeared in mid-air, followed by a surface layer, and the three dropped to their feet and examined their surroundings.

Ice. Lots and lots of ice.

Half a minute later, Jeremie's voice echoed "virtualization", and Odd, Ulrich, and Yumi joined them.

"Well this is a shocker," said Yumi upon seeing William.

Indeed, it was a shocking sight. The Lyoko warriors had expected William to be in his light blue Lyoko form like the first time he had set foot there, just as had been shown on his card and his hollow green outline on the supercomputer monitor. But they did not really expect him to look exactly as he did when he was XANA's faithful servant, down to the spiked bracer and the XANA eyes on his chest and his forehead and his sword.

"Wow, I've never seen myself in this before," William commented after a few seconds of awkward silence. "XANA has good fashion sense."

"The eye needs to go, though." Maiana dismissed his comment with a wave of her right hand. "It's creepy."

"Enough about fashion sense. Get going!"

"Hey, Maiana. Ever learn that it's not a good habit to smoke?" Ulrich pointed at her hand.

"Jeremie, remember there's no tower?" Odd reminded Jeremie at the same time.

"Oh...right," Jeremie stammered.

"Well looky what we have here." Maiana studied her right hand, which was emitting light blue smoke and travelling to and surrounding Ulrich's sabres. The digital metal blades seemed to absorb the smoke, glowing bright blue for a second, and then they faded back to normal as the smoke disappeared altogether. Ulrich took out his blades and examined them.

"Look, your hair's glowing too, like LSD." Odd pointed at Maiana's hair streaks, which were glowing an icy blue color, just like the rest of her outfit.

Ulrich looked up from his sabres. "LED, Odd," he corrected as Maiana began humming 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds'. He experimentally swung one of his blades, but it seemed perfectly normal, as if nothing had happened. "Jeremie, what happened?"

"Well, first of all, XANA has spotted you. Four tarantulas approaching from the north!"

"Alright, then," said Odd, and he leapt towards the incoming tarantulas, firing some arrows. One arrow and a fan hit a target, and the tarantula exploded. He jumped up, shouting, "YEAH!"

And was almost immediately pelted in the back by another laser. The source was quickly taken care of by Ulrich, whose now-glowing sabres had sliced through the tarantula like butter. He stared again at his weapons and grinned. "Cool."

"It seems as if Maiana has enchanted your swords, Ulrich," said Jeremie. "It took a lot of mana to do it, though."

The remaining two tarantulas were taken care of by Aelita distracting them and William cleaving through them with his giant sword.

Aelita retreated to the ground, and was immediately put off by what she felt beneath her feet.

"Pulsations!" she gasped.

"XANA," Yumi growled.

"Hey, guys, there's an activated tower right now in the desert sector. Can you take care of it?"

"Of course, Jeremie!" Ulrich's voice was like that of a master gamer accepting a challenge to beat a blind three-year-old at Tetris.

"We're on our way now," said Aelita as she took off in the direction of a way tower. Everyone else ran after her across the frozen wasteland.

It wasn't long before they were joined by two megatanks and seven hornets. Ulrich cheered as he tried his enchanted swords out on a megatank and was able to slip his blade between the two halves of the shell thus destroying the megatank. Odd and Yumi took over hornet duty, while Aelita just fired energy fields wherever she could get them in, William blocked shots, and Maiana just kind of tried not to get hit. But as quickly as the monsters were destroyed, they were replaced.

Meanwhile, it was going to take awhile to replace the devirtualized Odd.

They persisted all the way to the way tower, until all five remaining warriors were inside and travelling to the desert sector. They exited and found themselves on a plateau littered with large diagonal slabs of brown rock; the activated tower was just across a ridge on two plateaus over.

Immediately when Maiana stepped out (she was one of the last to have exited the way tower) she was devirtualized by a megatank hiding behind a rock. Without thinking or listening to Yumi's sudden cry of "No wait!", William held up his blade, charged it with an energy shot, and swung it out, releasing the energy wave that both destroyed the megatank and devirtualized Yumi, as well as knocking a few life points off of Ulrich and Aelita.

"Why can't he just stop and listen for once?" a miffed Yumi grumbled as she stepped out of the scanner.

"Uh, oops," murmured William.

"Ulrich and Aelita, be careful. You're both low on life points and the tower's still too far away," said Jeremie.

"Can you call up some vehicles?" Ulrich requested.

"Vehicles are on the way." In front of them just seconds later, two vehicles materialized: the overbike and the overwing. William hesitantly took the overwing while Aelita and Ulrich shared the overbike, and they made for the tower.

"It's strange that XANA seems to have not launched an Earth attack," Odd commented.

"I know. That's why I want this tower taken care of as soon as possible," replied Jeremie.

"Look, they're almost there," Yumi said, a bit hopeful.

"Yeah, but look what else is there," Maiana pointed. "Ew, what are those?"

"Krabbes. And the scyphozoa."

-xx-

Indeed, on Lyoko, XANA had sent a small army of krabbes to guard the tower. And the centerpiece of their formation was the scyphozoa.

"What could XANA possibly want from you now, Aelita?!" Ulrich shouted upon seeing the giant jellyfish.

"I don't know, and I'd rather not find out," murmured Aelita as she readied an energy field.

"Jump when I say so, Aelita," said Ulrich, and he directed his Overbike directly at the scyphozoa. William, meanwhile, took his sword and began thinning out the crowd of krabbes.

About five meters from the jellyfish, Ulrich yelled and jumped while Aelita sprouted wings and took to the air. Ulrich unsheathed both sabres and attacked the bulbous head of the scyphozoa.

And he basically bounced right off, while the digital jellyfish raised its tentacles so that the speeding bike passed harmlessly beneath it and exploded into digital dust against the activated tower. Ulrich landed about three meters away on one side, his sabres broken and gone, and sprawled out awkwardly as the rest of him disintegrated into virtual dust.

"No...!" Aelita gasped before forming energy fields to fire at the creature.

William had seen it all, and now he was going to do things his way. He held up his giant sword, let out something of a battle cry, and ran full speed towards the scyphozoa. His intent was obviously to cut the tentacles, but it didn't work. He was knocked aside, and then picked up by two tentacles. Three more were placed to his head.

Aelita screamed. There was no way she was going to let XANA have William again. She conjured a supercharged energy field and dropped it on the dark warrior and his sea-creature-y captor. William was devirtualized, and the scyphozoa was knocked back long enough for Aelita to get inside the tower.

"That was some quick thinking, Aelita," Jeremie complimented as the pinkette made her ascent up the tower. Moments later the angry red smoke around the tower faded to neutral white.

She joined them all a minute or two later in the lab.

"So...that seemed random," Ulrich mustered.

"Do we even know what XANA's attack on Earth was?" asked Yumi.

"If you ask me," Jeremie began, "he wanted to put a wrench in our Lyoko training sessions, and what better way to do that than to possess someone, especially someone as powerful as William."

"So... XANA needs the tower's energy to send the scyphozoa?" Maiana inquired.

"Uh, not quite," mused Aelita. "I've seen a few instances that he didn't need it. Like when he stole the keys in my memory. There weren't any activated towers until after it had gotten to me."

"So why did he activate a tower?" Ulrich repeated.

If there had been crickets, they would have been chirping in the silence that followed his question.

Finally, Jeremie spoke up. "If XANA's going to play total secrecy with us, it can only be because he's planning something huge."

"When is he ever not planning something big?" Yumi retorted.

"...When he's shut off?" William mused.

"Quiet, William," Yumi glared.

"Actually, William's right, which is why I'm going to start work on a new antiXANA program right away," declared Jeremie. "Starting tonight."

Aelita raised her hand to object, then thought differently and lowered it. Instead, she gave Jeremie a sad, solemn look. The same look everyone else was sharing.

* * *

**A|N:** So, I feel so bad for not updating this now, especially since I had all of these huge plans since last year of where the story was going to go and everything. I promise chapter 3 is not far behind - I've had that one written for several months now.

**Disclaimers:** I don't own Code Lyoko. I don't own Maiana's outfit design since it is technically Jinx. And I do not seek to make any material profit from posting my stories here. I do not own the song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds." Also, I don't own the two girls (OCs) sitting behind Yumi and Maiana in Spanish class.


	4. 3 Acute Normality

The next morning promptly at 06:30, Aelita's alarm clock went off, as it had for several nights prior. A song by the Subdigitals came on, though Maiana was too groggy to recognize which song it was.

Aelita jumped up and turned off the alarm, and then grabbed her robe, a towel, and some soap, and ran out the door, probably to get to the showers before Sissi and her gang used up all the hot water. This left Maiana to sleep in peace for another half hour, after which her own alarm would sound. And at precisely 07:00, it did.

Maiana was still too groggy to do anything about it immediately, and she didn't move as the organ and guitar started jamming with the organ (her alarm was the song "Lazy" by Deep Purple). Finally she rolled out of bed, stood up, and hit the 'off' button.

She didn't notice that the power had gone out of the radio at the exact same time. She didn't notice the black spectre that began to encircle her as she looked for a clean shirt in the wardrobe. It wasn't until the spectre had completely entered her through her ears that there was any change in her behavior. She suddenly fell back to the ground and rolled around, coughing, as she phased in and out between flesh and pixels.

For a minute, it looked as if she was winning, and bits of black ghost began to spurt out of her mouth and shut eyes like tears as she continued to cough out the smoky spectre. But suddenly, she went completely still.

Aelita, now dressed in her robe and her pink hair still somewhat wet, came through the door.

"Maiana? Are you alright?" she asked. "I heard a thud and loud coughing a minute or two ago."

"I rolled out of the bed on accident and choked on my own saliva," Maiana replied quietly, her eyes still closed. "I'm okay. I'll be up in just a minute."

Aelita looked at her for a few seconds. "Okay," she said, and got her clothes out of the wardrobe, and left the room to dress in the bathroom.

A few seconds later, Maiana did get up. And when she opened her eyes, her eyes flashed blue and her pupils had been replaced with what was unmistakably the Eye of XANA.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Breakfast was quiet. Aelita and Jeremie talked about a project Mrs. Hertz had assigned to the class the day before. Odd was too busy eating his double portion of scrambled eggs to say anything. Yumi and Ulrich were sitting in stony silence while William tried desperately to make amends with Yumi. And XANA-Maiana just slowly ate her breakfast except for the eggs (which she had given to Odd). It was, all in all, a normal breakfast.

The group broke up to go to their first classes, and the only thing abnormal thing was that Maiana appeared to be sleeping during class, keeping her head down. Yet when she was addressed by the teacher she was fully able to answer the question in a way that was both complete and worded so that even the least adept of the class could understand. It's not that it was strange for her—she'd done it yesterday too, though just slightly less—but it seemed strange to other classmates who could only sleep or pay attention, not both.

"She sure is smart," William whispered to Yumi. "She picks things up well."

"Yeah. It worries me," replied Yumi.

"Why?"

"How many times do you think she would have discovered our secret without us knowing before she finally did something outwardly about it? Do you think she would have joined us anyway, or do you think she would have exposed it all?"

"What are the odds she hears us right now?"

They turned their heads towards Maiana, whose head was still on the desk. She looked like she could have been sleeping, but through the thin curtain of hair over her face, they could see her dark eyes darting around the room.

"Probably very high," Yumi finally admitted.

William nodded, and they turned their attention back to what was being written on the chalkboard.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

A window with some complex programming opened on the supercomputer. The line began processing themselves, highlighting themselves and then scrolling down. After a few minutes, the window closed, another one with a generic-looking percent meter opened and began to fill slowly, and the superscan began to flash.

At the exact same instant, in the last ten minutes of their last class before lunch, Jeremie's laptop began to beep. He quickly took it out and opened it discreetly underneath his desk to see that a tower had been activated in the ice sector. Jeremie recognized the coordinates: it was the same tower that had been active when XANA had taken over the military satellite and turned it on Yumi and Odd. This worried Jeremie, and he mused that he shouldn't wait for those nine minutes to pass to go to the factory even though it wasn't likely that XANA was going to try the satellite ordeal again. Still, he didn't want to chance it.

He looked over at Aelita, who had seen it also. She looked at him. He nodded, then glanced at Ulrich, who gave him a questioning look, and Odd, who was on the verge of falling asleep. Jeremie indicated his laptop with a slight inclination of his head. Ulrich nodded and pointed toward the clock, which now dictated seven-and-a-half minutes until the end of class.

Jeremie raised his hand. "Uh, ma'am? May I go to the bathroom?"

"Me too!" Ulrich piped up.

"I have to go, too..." added Aelita.

Mrs. Hertz scowled. "There are less than ten minutes left in class. Unless you're dead or dying, I'm sure you can all wait until then."

Jeremie sat down, slightly red-faced for being publicly scolded and for the fact that she was right and he was in the wrong. And it irritated him that even though he wasn't dead or dying at that instant, someone could end up that way because of the extra seven minutes it would take to get to the factory and deactivate the tower. When XANA was attacking, seven minutes was a lot of time.

Aelita laid her hand on his understandingly, and he took a deep breath, and the red disappeared from his cheeks. In fact, had he not known the urgency of the situation, he might have even smiled. Her presence gave him just enough patience to last the next six-and-three-quarters minutes of class.

And just as things always do when you're anxiously waiting for something, those four-hundred-five seconds ticked by ever so slowly, as if the ever-steady tempo of the tick of the second hand on the clock had been deliberately halved and was on an everlasting rallentando. Mrs. Hertz's words seemed to become more and more drone-like, and slowly disappeared as the ticking crescendo'ed in volume, taunting the Lyoko warriors.

_That clock looks too scarily like an eye,_ thought Jeremie at somewhere around three-hundred twenty-eight seconds; it was one of those clocks that had an extra circle in the middle of the clock face to notate the minutes and seconds. _The Eye of XANA._

_Is this how he plans to do it? Possess the clock and have it start sparking battery shocks from it?_ It seemed a bit of a weak attack, but one could never tell when it came to XANA.

As twelve-thirty ticked closer and closer, Jeremie began to fidget in his seat. His eyes appeared to dilate as his attention shifted more and more completely towards the clock. His legs began to shake like those of a person with severe restless legs syndrome as he itched to get out and stop XANA.

With seventy-three-and-two-fifths seconds left in class, Aelita tightened her grip on his shoulder, and he calmed down a bit. Mrs. Hertz had finally stopped talking, which meant Aelita could use her right hand to grasp Jeremie's hand, which by this point was also shaking. This seemed to bring him back to the point of mild sanity, and he tore his eyes from the clock to Aelita. She gave him a reassuring smile, and before he knew it, he was also smiling, and then the bell rang.

He was up immediately, and the four of them dashed out of the room to run by the other three's classroom. Yumi, William, and Maiana met them halfway there, though.

"I got your text," Yumi said to Ulrich. Jeremie had been so focused on the clock that he hadn't noticed anything else besides Aelita.

"Good. Jeremie says it's bad," replied Ulrich.

"I'll explain on the way," Jeremie mumbled as the seven exited the building and made their way to the building with the boiler, and within seven minutes they were at the factory, and Ulrich, William, and Aelita were being virtualized into the ice sector, on top of a large, flat glacier.

"So Jeremie, you still haven't given us that explanation yet," Yumi commented as she, Maiana, and Odd stepped into the scanners once the other three were gone.

"Right..." said Jeremie as the scanner doors closed and they began to hum. "As soon as you're all virtualized." He virtualized them, and they landed on the ground with the other three. A red spinning exclamation point appeared on Maiana's virtual envelope.

"Uh, Maiana, there was a bug in your transfer," said Jeremie.

"Yeah, I know," Maiana replied. "My garb is red, but it should be blue." Indeed her shawl, shoes, and other effects which had been icy blue yesterday were almost scarlet red today. The only blue now was in the streaks in her hair.

"How do you know?" asked Odd.

"I trained here just yesterday, remember? I was blue, not this icky red color."

"Oh, that's right."

"Well, do you feel anything wrong?" Jeremie asked. "The supercomputer's not telling me anything."

She stood there for a moment, considering. "No," she finally said.

"Alright," sighed Jeremie. "The activated tower is due west of your current position. Aelita, if you remember, it's not on top of the block; it's inside it, behind a waterfall."

"Jeremie, isn't that the same tower XANA activated when he took control over that satellite and tried to kill Yumi and Odd?" asked Ulrich.

"He did WHAT?" William cried. "Nobody ever told me about this!"

"It happened a long time before you, William," Odd stated.

"Yep," Jeremie replied to Ulrich's question. "That's what concerns me. What does he plans to do with it this time?"

"Who knows? Our biggest job right now is to stop him. Anyway, the welcoming committee just arrived," announced Odd.

"We've got a whole seafood platter!" Yumi added as she threw her fans at a Manta and missed. "Aw, darnn it, I missed."

"Mmm, sushi," mused Maiana as she began to concentrate.

"How can you people stand that stuff?" Odd inquired as he began firing arrows.

"I've got it!" William yelled as he ran forward and sliced through two Mantas with his broadsword.

"Nice one!" Aelita congratulated as she struck a Krab with an energy field.

Maiana's concentration finally paid off, and she cast a blue aura that surrounded the monsters like smoke. On the supercomputer, her mana points went down to 400, and Jeremie could see the life points ever so slowly being depleted from monsters.

"Great cast, Maiana!" he applauded. "I don't think I've seen that be—hey, what's this?"

The percent meter had just appeared on the screen where he could see it, and had just jumped from 47 to 67 percent.

"Well, that's a dead Krab," said Odd as he pointed and fired a laser arrow at a Krab, destroying it. "And this is a dead Manta," he continued, shooting the Manta. "And that's another seafood platter," he added as another group of Krabs and Mantas, all engulfed by Maiana's blue smoky aura, made their way over and began firing. "You're going to have to be more specific, Einstein."

"Very funny, Odd," came Jeremie's voice. "What I can't figure out is this percent meter. I wonder if it's part of XANA's attack."

"Or maybe XANA's tapped into you, and the percent meter is showing how close you are to snapping from the paranoia," Maiana said, with an air of sarcasm.

"Maybe so... In that case, Aelita, go ahead and break off; I want that tower deactivated before it hits 100%. Take Maiana with you. Since she seems to have better control over her powers now maybe she'll be a bit of a help to you in case you run into any more problems."

"Don't worry, Jeremie. I'll take good care of her," Maiana replied, and the two broke off from the rest of the group.

"The rest of you guys cover for them," Jeremie ordered to the rest of them.

"We'll do our best, but we haven't finished the job here yet," responded Ulrich.

"They just keep coming!" Odd added. "Jeremie, load me up; I'm out of arrows."

"Really? That's a lot of arrows. Hold on," said Jeremie.

"Ahhhhhhhh! Too late," Odd yelled as he was devirtualized.

"Sorry," Jeremie muttered.

While Ulrich, Yumi, and William continued to fight the monsters, Maiana and Aelita made it to the waterfall that was in front of the entrance to the cavern where the tower was located; the red glow could be seen through the sheet of water.

"This is it," said Aelita.

"Do you want me to go in with you?" Maiana asked.

"You can stay here if you like. I'll be just fine."

"Whatever you say."

Aelita ran into the cave and hopped the ice chunks to get into the tower.

As soon as she passed through the tower membrane, another sound was heard, something of a low screech, and ketchup being squeezed out of its packet. Maiana turned around.

"And here we have our grand master topping of our seafood platter: the jellyfish, scientifically known as the Scyphozoa," she murmured, cutting off the audio between her and Jeremie. But that didn't stop Ulrich from noticing the last word.

"Did Maiana just say... Scyphozoa?"

"WHAT?!" Jeremie's voice came.

Maiana was too busy trying to cast some aura while simultaneously dodging the Scyphozoa's tentacles. Blue smoke began to emit out of the tips of her fingers, but it was too late, and she was captured. Her glowing blue streaks turned to red, and began to glow as the monster began the data transfer. A few Krabs came to guard her.

The tower in the cavern turned back to a neutral blue color.

"Guys!" shouted Jeremie. "Maiana's been captured by the Scyphozoa!"

"Oh great, great, just great," muttered Yumi.

"YAAAAAAaAAAAAAAHHHH!" William let out something of a war cry as he sliced through a line of monsters like cucumbers, leaving only a Manta and two Krabs.

"Wow, nice going, William," Jeremie congratulated.

"Jeremie? Are you there?" Aelita's voice came.

"Aelita! What's going on?"

"Well, I just left the tower, and Maiana's been captured by the Scyphozoa."

"Oh yeah... You took care of the Krabs?"

"Yes, they're gone, but my energy fields are useless against the Scyphozoa itself."

At the exact same moment, the percent meter on Jeremie's screen, which had stopped climbing when Aelita had deactivated the tower, jumped to 98%. "Well keep trying! The others are on their way, I hope. It's strange; the supercomputer's picked up that the Scyphozoa had captured Maiana, but it's not showing any data transfer whatsoever."

"XANA could be inputting data into her at the same rate as he's stealing data so that the numbers stay stagnant?"

"Maybe. Well, hurry!"

"Hurry for what?" Odd inquired as he moved from the elevator into the supercomputer room.

"Maiana's been captured by the Scyphozoa, but the supercomputer isn't detecting any data transfers. It's really strange."

"Sounds like it. Are the others on their way to help?"

"Hopefully," said Jeremie.

Meanwhile on Lyoko, William and Ulrich were taking out the ever-growing multitude of Krabs and Mantas, while Yumi ran off to attack the Scyphozoa.

"Jeremie, I've caught up to her. I don't know what you're seeing, but it sure does look like the thing is stealing something from her," said Yumi.

"It's definitely picking something up now, but I'm not sure what. Hurry and cut it off!" ordered Jeremie.

"Yeeeeeeaaaaaahhh!" Yumi cried as she threw her fans which cut through the tentacles attached to Maiana's head. Her streaks stopped glowing, and she was dropped to the ground, unconscious, as the Scyphozoa floated away. Before the girl, probably possessed now, could get up, Aelita fired an energy field and devirtualized her. Simultaneously, the percent meter, which had been frozen at 99%, reached 100% and then promptly closed before Jeremie could see exactly what it had done.

"Jeremie. Hurry. Run the materialization program now," Aelita huffed.

"Right. Materialization Yumi! Materialization Aelita!" The two ladies were devirtualized from Lyoko. "Ulrich and William, you guys are next."

"Good to know. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to stomach seafood ever again," Ulrich grumbled. "Did you deactivate the tower?"

"Yeah, it's done."

"So why are we still here, then?"

"Because you haven't gotten devirtualized yet?"

"Jeremie! There's something wrong with Maiana." This time it was Yumi's voice.

"What? What's wrong?"

"Well, for starters, she's unconscious."

"What is it, Jeremie?" asked Odd, next to Jeremie.

"Go down to the scanner room and find out," replied Jeremie. "I've got to devirtualize the other two." He began typing more code. "Materialization Ulrich! Materialization William!"

"Finally!" Jeremie heard Ulrich say as he was devirtualized.

Odd made his way down the ladder into the scanner room and beheld the sight of Maiana curled up in one scanner, with Yumi and Aelita around her, and Ulrich and William emerging from the other two scanners.

"Is she sleeping?" he asked.

"I guess so," replied Aelita. "I don't really know why we were freaking out. She was barely awake the last two times she was materialized, and being attacked by the scyphozoa isn't exactly an energizing ordeal."

William tried to rush forward to look, but was held back by Ulrich's arm.

"Is she okay?" Jeremie's voice came from somewhere above.

"Yeah, she's just asleep," Odd replied.

"You guys had me worried. I'm glad it's nothing serious."

"Can we go to lunch now? I'm starving!"

"Uh, lunch is over, Odd. Wow, that was a long battle."

"In that case, we'd better hurry up and get to class," said Yumi.

"With Maiana still asleep?" asked William as he began to help Yumi support Maiana's weight on their shoulders.

"We'll drop her off in the infirmary if she's still asleep when we get there," Yumi replied as they got Maiana settled and began moving to the elevator.

The elevator rose and they picked up Jeremie, and then got back to the school with nothing to report. As planned, Maiana was left in the infirmary, fast asleep, leaving Yolande with the story that she had fainted in the lunchroom.

As soon as the Lyoko warriors had gone away, Yolande checked her vitals, and found them to be normal for someone who was, quite simply, asleep. But since passing out usually meant a bigger problem, she turned to rummage through a drawer. She located a small box of ammonia salts, took out one of the tiny pungent packets, and squeezed it under Maiana's nose.

As soon as the salt's aroma had founds its way into the girl's nose, her face wrinkled, eyes squinting. This was a good sign, the nurse thought to herself. Several seconds later, Maiana's eyes opened and her facial expression immediately indicated irritation at the sudden bright light and awful aroma in her sinuses. She'd never be able to get that taste out, she grumbled internally.

"Ugh," she groaned aloud. "What happened?"

"Your friends tell me you passed out at lunch. Are you feeling okay now?" Yolande asked.

"Lunch? I haven't even had breakfast." Oops, apparently the wrong thing to say. Yolande's eyes registered concern. "Yet," she added. Now the blonde nurse was confused too.

"I'll see if Rosa can bring some of the lunch leftovers down. Until then, you stay there and rest," she ordered as she left the room.

Alone with her thoughts, Maiana fished through her pockets for her cell phone. She found Aelita's number and typed a quick message.

xXxXxXx

**A|N:** Apologies for the delay in posting... again. My beta reader took a bit longer than usual to get back to me, but it's done. I'd promise that the next chapter is going to be posted soon, but it already seems I can't keep such promises, and so all I can promise is that it'll be good.

Disclaimer: I do not own the song "Lazy" by Deep Purple.


End file.
